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C URCUMIN AND D IABETES
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• Nerve damage is experienced by 60 to 70% of people with dia-
betes, often causing erectile dysfunction in men.
• Diabetes causes circulatory problems that led to 65,700 lower
limb amputations in diabetics in 2008.
• Diabetes is listed as a contributing cause of death in more than
231,000 deaths.
Science now generally accepts that diabetes is an inflammatory
condition, as is obesity. As you might well imagine, this is where
curcumin comes into the picture.
THE GOLDEN KNIGHT REDUX
Remember the role of free radical oxygen molecules as underlying
causes of most disease processes from Chapter 1?
Curcumin’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties are
especially applicable to diabetes and its complications.
Here’s what the studies show curcumin can do:
Reduce glucose production in the liver: A Japanese study shows
that curcumin has the ability to reduce the liver’s natural produc-
tion of glucose, which in healthy people is balanced by the pan-
creas’s production of insulin to keep glucose levels steady.
Keep glucose out of red blood cells: Scientists treated red blood
cells to mimic diabetes, then exposed them to curcumin for just 24
hours. The results: Curcumin normalized the cells in terms of sugar
processing and prevented the formation of the fatty globules that
clog arteries.
Prevent the development of diabetes: A Columbia University study
showed that mice with a predisposition toward diabetes and obe-
sity given daily doses of curcumin were less likely to develop
impaired blood sugar, insulin resistance and full-blown diabetes
than those that did not receive curcumin.